^M THE NEW EVOLUTION ^l| 



presents the greatest similarity to the anthropoid or 

 man-like apes of western Africa and southeastern Asia 

 — the gorillas, the chimpanzees, the orangs and 

 the gibbons. 



Structurally and anatomically man is rather close 

 to these man-like apes. This is a readily demon- 

 strable fact which is quite beyond dispute. But it is 

 also beyond dispute that there is a sharp, clean-cut, 

 and very marked difference between man and the 

 apes. Every bone in the body of a man is at once 

 distinguishable from the corresponding bone in the 

 body of any of the apes. 



Man belongs to the same division of the mammals 

 — the Primates — as the apes. But his similarity to 

 the modern apes does not imply any direct relation- 

 ship with them. Man is not an ape, and in spite of 

 the similarity between them there is not the slightest 

 evidence that man is descended from an ape. 



The large anthropoid apes — the gorillas, the chim- 

 panzees and the orang-outans — are all very highly 

 specialized terminal twigs from the Primate stock. 

 They are so very delicately adjusted to their environ- 

 ment that they all are very difficult to keep in cap- 

 tivity. They represent a vanishing group all the 

 members of which are now restricted to very limited 

 areas, the orang-outans to Borneo and Sumatra and 

 the gorillas and chimpanzees to equatorial west 

 Africa. They thus have almost the same distribu- 

 tion as those curious lemuroids called the lorises 

 and pottos. 



Man also is very highly specialized, though in 



